NO FIXED HERITAGE. NEW BALANCE MADE IN UK MEETS SPACE AFRIKA IN MANCHESTER.

New Balance Made in UK is not an abstract production label, nor just a postcode flex. It’s the brand’s premium manufacturing line, produced in Flimby since 1982. Technical features like ABZORB cushioning meet a manufacturing culture built on repetition, material knowledge, and the skills of experienced footwear specialists, some of whom have been building shoes for over 40 years.

Think of everything that has shifted in those four decades: music, terraces, clubs, streetwear, collectors, everyday uniforms. Somewhere along the way, the sneaker stopped being only a technical object and became a cultural sponge. Made in UK silhouettes are British and global at once, rooted in factory process but constantly recharged by the scenes that wear them.

That is where innovation and heritage start to overlap. Not as opposites, but as a loop: one keeps the other moving. Which is why this story travels to Manchester, where we meet Joshua Inyang and Joshua Reid, collectively known as Space Afrika, to explore the cultural grammar around the 991v2 “Vibrant Chroma” pack.

For Space Afrika, this loop is familiar. Growing up in Manchester meant inheriting a certain restlessness: a need to keep pushing things forward, to stand by what you believe in, to let tradition move instead of harden. Their reading of Made in UK follows the same logic. Engineering, quality, and respect for craft are there, but never as fixed ideas. Tradition only matters if it keeps evolving, shaped by the people who carry it forward.

Space Afrika’s work has always moved through a similar atmosphere, building sound from field recordings, environmental ambience, manipulated samples, fragments of spoken word, and lived experience. For them, music works as an output: a way to process what is happening around them, from personal memory to the pressure of the city.

The 991v2 “Vibrant Chroma” pack moves in the same way. Not as heritage kept behind glass, but as something still picking up heat, depth, and use.In Space Afrika’s own words, Made in UK is “redefining itself over time while staying connected to where it comes from.” That’s the whole point. No fixed heritage. Just a shape that keeps collecting context. Available now at all Slam Jam doors.